potoo
noun
potoo is a noun meaning “Any species of the family Nyctibiidae within the order Nyctibiiformes related to the nightjars (order Caprimulgiformes), and found from southern…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-O-T-O-O, and it appears about once in every 72 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of potoo is potoos.
What does potoo mean?
noun
- 1
Any species of the family Nyctibiidae within the order Nyctibiiformes related to the nightjars (order Caprimulgiformes), and found from southern Mexico to southern Brazil.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of potoo
- potoos plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is potoo?
Potoo appears about once in every 72 million words in written English, the 269,040th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Potoo in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense any bird of the order Nyctibiiformes:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | ibijau |
| German | Tagschläfer |
| Spanish | nictibio, urutaú, pájaro estaca |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.